Case Analysis Background 33 The case scenario was based on Gateway Estate Lawn Equipment Co. Case Study, used for the 1997 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner Training course. This material is in the public domain. The database, however, was developed by the author. PLE, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is a privately owned designer and producer of traditional lawn mowers used by homeowners. In the past 10 years, PLE has added another key product, a medium-size diesel power lawn tractor with front and rear power takeoffs, Class I three-point hitches, four-wheel drive, power steering, and full hydraulics. This equipment is built primarily for a niche market consisting of large estates, including golf and country clubs, resorts, private estates, city parks, large commercial complexes, lawn care service providers, private homeowners with five or more acres, and government (federal, state, and local) parks, building complexes, and military bases. PLE provides most of the products to dealerships, which, in turn, sell directly to end users. PLE employs 1,660 people worldwide. About half the workforce is based in St. Louis; the remainder is split among their manufacturing plants. In the United States, the focus of sales is on the eastern seaboard, California, the Southeast, and the south central states, which have the greatest concentration of customers. Outside the United States, PLE’s sales include a European market, a growing South American market, and developing markets in the Pacific Rim and China. The market is cyclical, but the different products and regions balance some of this, with just less than 30% of total sales in the spring and summer (in the United States), about 25% in the fall, and about 20% in the winter. Annual sales are approximately $180 million. Both end users and dealers have been established as important customers for PLE. Collection and analysis of end-user data showed that satisfaction with the products depends on high quality, easy attachment/dismount of implements, low maintenance, price value, and service. For dealers, key requirements are high quality, parts and feature availability, rapid restock, discounts, and timeliness of support. PLE has several key suppliers: Mitsitsiu, Inc., the sole source of all diesel engines; LANTO Axles, Inc., which provides tractor axles; Schorst Fabrication, which provides subassemblies; Cuberillo, Inc, supplier of transmissions; and Specialty Machining, Inc., a supplier of precision machine parts. To help manage the company, PLE managers have developed a “balanced scorecard” of measures. These data, which are summarized shortly, are stored in the form of a Microsoft Excel workbook (Performance Lawn Equipment) accompanying this book. The database contains various measures captured on a monthly or quarterly basis and used by various managers to evaluate business performance. Data for each of the key measures are stored in a separate worksheet. A summary of these worksheets is given next: • Dealer Satisfaction, measured on a scale of 1–5 (1 = poor, 2 = less than average, 3 = average,Elizabeth Burke has recently joined the PLE management team to oversee production operations. She has reviewed the types of data that the company collects and has assigned you the responsibility to be her chief analyst in the coming weeks. To prepare for this task, you have decided to review each worksheet and determine whether the data were gathered from internal sources, external sources, or have been generated from special studies. Also, you need to know whether the measures are categorical, ordinal, interval, or ratio.

Prepare a report summarizing the characteristics of the metrics used in each worksheet.

Elizabeth Burke has asked you to do some preliminary analysis of the data in the Performance Lawn Equipment database.

First, she would like you to edit the worksheets Dealer Satisfaction and End-User Satisfaction to display the total number of responses to each level of the survey scale across all regions for each year.
Second, she wants a count of the number of failures in the worksheet Mower Test.
Next, Elizabeth has provided you with prices for PLE products for the past 5 years:

Year
Mower Price ($)
Tractor Price ($)
2010
150
3,250
2011
175
3,400
2012
180
3,600
2013
185
3,700
2014
190
3,800

Create a new worksheet in the database to compute gross revenues by month and region, as well as worldwide totals, for each product using the data in Mower Unit Sales and Tractor Unit Sales.
Finally, she wants to know the market share for each product and region based on the PLE and industry sales data in the database.
Create and save these calculations in a new worksheet. Summarize all your findings in a report to Ms. Burke.

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Please develop YOUR OWN TEAM Business Analytics EXCEL model(s) to support all your answers and analyses and post this(these) file(s) in addition to your Case Analysis Performance Lawn Equipment Report.
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Finally, please answer ALL Questions and Sections of this Data Analytics for Business Case with great detail AND STEP BY STEP being extremely methodical and accurate in your answers. It is extremely important that for each Question and Section, you write the entire question and you LABEL and/or PLACE the appropriate headings and subheadings clearly for EACH part of the question and/or section.
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Please address, analyze, and discuss in great detail and thoroughly support and explain the whats, hows, and whys of each of your answers.